Friday August 2
Jan’s out on Blanquette, his Ette dinghy, battling against a non-blowing wind, and a wrong-running tide intent on sending his little clinker-built vessel backwards, despite the cheeky little bowsprit still hopefully pointing towards the finish line.
Caryl’s on the wall, watching and enjoying the beautiful day, the balmy air, the soft Irish sunshine, the blue rippling sea, the idle, aimless, companionable background chat of friends, and thinking how wonderful it is to be on holiday.
This soporific, sunny silence is broken not by the cry of seagulls, which you no longer hear anyway, but by an ominous, urgent, unmistakably WhatsAp Ping! Lately that has meant nothing but bad news.
Evacuation taking place 2 km away. We’re helpless. Waiting. The wind is rising and has started two fires at our place. There’s a big fire to the north, and another to the NW, and there’s a northerly wind blowing. It’s too terrible.
And this where many growers have lost their crop to the incredible heat of the last two months. Then, later, another Ping!:
Things are calming down. 3 fires around us. 30 ha of burned vines at the neighbour’s. 200 ha of woodland down. The men are out there helping. The women are phoning around, trying to organise things. It’s terrible.
And in between the two, from another friend in another part of the Languedoc:
A big fire near us too. 15 fire-engines at least. I’ve been told to get ready to evacuate.
Oh, this is too awful. Your heart plunges to the bottom of your feet, and the day immediately loses its bloom. I go on line, and see that a fire-fighter has lost his life. Suddenly I don’t even want to be here any more, enjoying myself blank-mindedly: you simply want to help. But here is nothing anyone can do. “We’re helpless”, as my friend said.
Saturday 3 August
No more bad news today, in fact, silence. Which is also a bit worrying. But the good news is overwhelming, unheralded by a Ping! of any kind. It’s a simple email that slips in announced, and without fanfare.
“Just tasted Dédicace 2018. What you lack in quantity, you have certainly made up for in quality. I initially ended by tasting note “Scrummy”, but decided that was not professional enough.”
Signed: Jancis Robinson MW
Wow!
How unbelievably generous and thoughtful of someone who is incontestably the world’s most respected wine writer, to take the time to write to us. (And BTW, this is confidential, just between you and me.) Suddenly life looks a lot more positive than it did this time yesterday. Or even this time last year.
Wednesday August 7
Blanquette, the Ette dinghy, loses the so-called Ocean Race by half a bowsprit. (Or perhaps we should say her helmsman did). But it’s a beautiful day, and who cares about half a bowsprint’s one-second miss? As we sail into magical Glandore harbour, a couple of dolphins follow us in – and an open fresh prawn sandwich awaits us at the Glandore Inn, with a glass of Odyssée … our very own Odyssée, tasting very much of home and at home here.
We decide to go for dinner to Glebe Gardens in Baltimore, another beautiful W.Cork harbour, after which the other Baltimore is named, and there’s another nice surprise awaits us: not just the garden-fresh vegetables, perfectly prepared, for which Glebe is known, but also Sacha, the restaurant manager, opening a bottle of … Odyssée. Yessiree, our very own Odyssée. Now, that’s a very nice surprise!
Friday August 10
Last lunch at Castletownshend’s iconic MaryAnn’s Bar & Restaurant. Last open crab sandwich, last seafood chowder, last Baltimore mussels.
Last bottle of our chardonnay-chenin served in its sunny back garden.
Home tomorrow to face the music.
Though it feels as if we’ve been drinking quite a lot of Home here.
Monday 12 August
Véraison! A big step towards the harvest. This is the point where green grapes lose that hard jade-like colour and become a soft, translucent grape-green (red grapes become red), and the job is done when you can see the pips through the skin. This process can take from two days to two weeks. Technically, the herbaceous organs such as leaves and stalks, which have been stocking up all the energy resulting from photosynthesis, now open the floodgates and pass those sugars into the burgeoning grapes. We’re on the slippery slope to the harvest now, no going back. As usual, the chardonnay, is first to set off, with chenin blanc following on, and mauzac bringing up the rear.
Wednesday August 14
Such a gorgeous evening, tonight. Full moon to the east. Blazing vermillion sky to the west. Benson is charging into the hedges, Bacchus plods along contentedly. I turn around to call the one back and to the urge the other forward, when I see a blazing vermillion sky to the north-east as well. It’s not possible! Is Carcassonne burning?
We walk on a bit, and the night falls rapidly. An unmistakable thudding of a sounder of boars pounding among the vines drives all thought of everything out of our collective heads. They pass just a few meters behind me, and a few meters in front of the dogs, galloping loudly into the darkening vines. It’s a sound you’ll instantly recognise if you’ve ever heard stampeding wildebeest from inside a fragile tent. I freeze. So does Benson, who looks at me with pleading saucer eyes, gets his courage together and runs up, unbidden, faster than he ever has done in his life. He sits on my feet and presses his body against my leg, as if I could do anything about this urgent and present danger.
Bacchus, of course, just plods on unperturbed. But Benson and I are terrified. We would both bark, if only we could find our voice.
We continue to walk into the moon, right up to the old fig tree at the top of the vineyard. No figs yet. And then turn back. Benson has a small head, but quite a big brain. We reach the point of the boar encounter and he no longer dives into the vines, he stays firmly, and uncharacteristically, by my side. I stay by his. He doesn’t say a word. Nor do I. And then we see it: a ginormous, big, black boar waiting for us, blocking our path, swishing its tail. I phone Jan. Come and get us! Quickly! I whisper urgently, “Please!”.
At that very moment, Jan-Ailbe comes out in his tractor, to spray against Eudemis, another predator, though one seldom seen here. This one is only about 6 mm long: it’s a moth that lays its eggs in the vines, leaving the larvae there to gorge on our ripening grapes. His tractor makes a lovely loud throaty noise, and the boar melt into the night, black on black. Benson and I both breathe a sigh of relief, while Bacchus just keeps plodding along in the direction of the now, and it seems to me rather belatedly, approaching car.
I completely forget to tell Jan about the fire on the horizon. The near danger has driven then more distant one right out of my head.
Jan Ailbe sees it, of course, and calls us on the phone. We go back up into the vineyard, the fire has more than quadrupled in size in that short period of time. The smell of smoke fills the air. This is really serious, much more so than I had realised just an hour ago. About 700 ha. of woodland are burning, we learn later, just 12 km south of Carcassonne. There are 5 Canadair and one Dash aircraft flying into the flames trying to put them out, with over 500 firemen on the ground. Suddenly you are aware to the core of your being what a massive, frightening menace fire is.
But the moon just keeps on shining.
What a night.
Saturday August 17
We were right to feel hot and headachy, exhausted and épuisé over these past few months. It’s official: July 2019 was the hottest July ever, or at least since the end of the 19th century, when they first started keeping proper records. And if that’s not enough, July 2019 was also the hottest month ever recorded on earth.
If Le Monde is to be believed, and it is, it was the 23rd July in a row with above-average temperatures, caused by human emissions of greenhouse gasses.
Tuesday 20 August
A gorgeous, gloomy, grey day, hurrah! With a nice gentle rain falling prettily and persistently over Rives-Blanques. So far 17 ml already down, can we hope for more? Our octogenarian neighbour, who has been growing grapes for longer than most of us have even been alive, said “C’est de l’or qui tombe”. Gold indeed, falling from the skies.
Friday 23 August
That 30 ml of rain earlier this week did us a lot of good. Bacchus goes into overdrive, quite a laborious unlabradorial thing for him to do, and starts frolicking among the vines, taking huge mouthfuls of the grapes. Sure sign that the harvest is about two weeks away,.
Tuesday 27 August
The Guide Hachette 2020 sends us their tasting notes for the new edition, which will be out next week. Very nice! We get a couple of stars, some amazingly quotable quotes, and plaudits from the pundit, which put us in a very good mood indeed. It’s nice to read about your vineyard as one of the best in the region.
It’s also nice that the Guide Verte, the wine guide published by France’s most famous wine magazine La Revue du Vin de France, says in its brand-new 2020 Guide of the Best Wines of France, also just out, that Rives-Blanques is situated in such a stunning landscape, and that our family has become very much a part of that landscape. This puts us in a particularly good mood, because until now they have always referred to us as newcomers, innocents (or perhaps ignorants) who came in from the banking world. It took only 19 years to reach this point, and we are very glad to be there!
And then the cherry. Jancis Robinson. The estimable. The admirable. The infallible.
She publishes some new tasting notes, and they include our Dédicace 2018. She calls it ” impressive”, says it shows all the qualities of “a great chenin”.
2018 was the year we could only make two of our five Limoux white wines. The year of hail and mildew. The worst year we have ever known. It was a challenge. It was dramatic, and the truth is, we are still traumatised by it. So getting this accolade is a truly wonderful validation of the work we put into the vintage.
What a happy day!
Thursday 29 August
It continues hot. Very hot. But at least the nights are cool.
Xaxa and Ian return to Rives-Blanques to help with the harvest.
Bacchus continues chomping on the grapes with ever increasing enthusiasm.
We’ve been tasting them, and he’s right. We all think next week will be the week to start. We know we will have to start next week. But we still go out into the sweat-pouring heat to pick grapes at random and test their sugar and acidity level – just as reassurance. Jan does a yield estimation: 48 hl p. ha he reckons: not very much, but fine, thank you. If he’s right. If nothing goes wrong. And all the other ifs.
Saturday 31 August
Very, very hot. There’s a terrible rumbling in the sky. We keep our fingers crossed ….
…/to be continued.